Seamlessly-branched unrated and theatrical cuts. One English DD 2.0 track is descriptive audio and another is a commentary (w/ English, Spanish and Portuguese commentary subs).

Like other recent Sony releases, there are hidden British English versions of the descriptive audio and SDH/dialog/commentary subs triggered when the player is set to Region B. I think there is also an alternate encoding of the commentary for the two cuts which should explain the extra additional hidden DD 2.0 track and English 1/English 2/Portuguese/Spanish sub set.

Animusic HD consists of one musical animation from Animusic and all eight from Animusic 2 re-rendered in 1080i60. The full temporal resolution is used, i.e. this isn't 1080p24 or 1080p30 with pulldown.

The DTS-HD 2.0 is a director's commentary track. The Presentation Graphics simply give the title of each animation piece as it starts and can be turned on/off via menu.

The other playlist I scanned is the Play All option for three other animations from Animusic in "high-bitrate (16 Mbps+) SD". The original presentation consisted of seven animations, so there are still three only available on DVD. The BD also has several other extras, duplicated from previous releases but again not comprehensively.

It's possible that those dub bit depth numbers are not completely accurate since the DTS spec allows for it to lie about its bit depth in the headers without affecting accurate decoding. The bitrates on the dubs do seem quite low for true 24-bit, but I don't currently have all the DTS-HD decoding widgets installed to run the tracks through something like eac3to to check them for sample truncation and a perhaps more representative bit depth.

EDIT: Although it wouldn't fundamentally change the complaint if they turned out to be, say 20-bit for the dubs.

Note: audio is only 2 channels. But don't let that worry you. If you want to watch five hours of quality British TV entertainment, look elsewhere. I strongly regret the two hours I spent on the first two episodes.

This UK edition misses out on a Spanish DD 2.0 DUB track, but provides both English and English SDH subtitles in a clear, white font.

Special Features: Unlike the US edition, in which all the extras were only accessible via BD-Live, the UK edition contains a fourth Blu-ray Disc (a BD-25) with a number of extra features, including cast and crew interviews running over half an hour, a separate interview with Michael C. Hall and John Lithgow, and three short featurettes. To reiterate, all video extras are encoded in the 1080p23.976 standard. All of the extras are optionally subtitled in English in the same white font.

There is also an audio commentary track on the final episode of the season with John Lithgow and episode director Steve Shill. This is also apparently absent from the US release. The commentary also has optional English subtitles in the same white font.

Even though the packaging shows a Region ABC symbol, the Blu-ray Disc is in fact Region B LOCKED (Confirmed by my own standalone Panasionic DMP-BD35 Multiregion and Region A BD-RE drive with AnyDVD HD).

The Blu-ray contains only the 176 minute feature, with optional, white font subtitles in French and English, and optional French SDH subtitles.

Extra features are available on an included dual-layered Region 0 PAL DVD. Some of these extras can be found on the UK R2 3 DVD set, but the longest extra, the 74-minute documentary "Don Giovanni, le film-opéra" seems exclusive to the French editions. Surprisingly, the DVD has both French and English menus, and all the extras have optional, white font English subtitles and French ones where necessary.

Folks, two things about Alien. First, here in Australia the current six disc 'facehugger' versions are running out and will, from late February, be replaced with a four disc version (one of the movies on each disc). This will not have the 'MU-TH-UR' mode, nor the 'Disc Unbound' feature.

Has this already been released in the US or UK, and has one of you scanned it yet to see if the video and audio data is the same?

Second, I've been scanning the Australian facehugger version and so far it seems identical to the US version shown on the front page. But an oddity arose with 'Aliens'. Like Alien it get an MPEG4 AVC treatment, but unlike Alien, Aliens has no 'B' frames. Alien seems pretty standard with 4.52% I, 46.43% P and 49.05% B. Aliens is 4.74% I and 95.26% P.

Folks, two things about Alien. First, here in Australia the current six disc 'facehugger' versions are running out and will, from late February, be replaced with a four disc version (one of the movies on each disc). This will not have the 'MU-TH-UR' mode, nor the 'Disc Unbound' feature.

Has this already been released in the US or UK, and has one of you scanned it yet to see if the video and audio data is the same?

I hadn't heard of anything other than packaging variations of the 6 Blu-ray set and the "Egg" varieties some of which I believe also include 4 DVDs.

Quote:

Second, I've been scanning the Australian facehugger version and so far it seems identical to the US version shown on the front page. But an oddity arose with 'Aliens'. Like Alien it get an MPEG4 AVC treatment, but unlike Alien, Aliens has no 'B' frames. Alien seems pretty standard with 4.52% I, 46.43% P and 49.05% B. Aliens is 4.74% I and 95.26% P.

Weird.

I had noticed this as well on my UK Aliens. The rental versions of Machete and Knight & Day from Fox also lack B-frames (and are presumably identical encodes to retail).

I thought I read in some press information it would have 24-bit 96kHz audio, guess that must have been a mistake.

Are you referring to the Dexter UK BD (where you quoted me) or the Don Giovanni (1979) BD below it?

In the case of the latter, the French and UK DVDs apparently had a DTS 5.1 96/24 track, but that was obviously plain DTS, and not DTS-HD MA as on the Blu-ray Disc. While I have not heard the DVD track, I cannot imagine it bests the lossless track on the Blu-ray, which sounds excellent.

The feature is encoded in 1080p23.976 and contains optional, white font English subtitles for non-English dialogue. The main extra, a 52-minute Making Of documentary, is encoded in 720p23.976 and contains optional, white font English subtitles where necessary. There is also a theatrical trailer in 1080p23.976. There is no 1080i/50Hz or PAL material on the disc.

I hadn't heard of anything other than packaging variations of the 6 Blu-ray set and the "Egg" varieties some of which I believe also include 4 DVDs.

The six disc version have an extra -- the MU-TH-UR mode -- on each of the four movies which relies on the presence of the fifth and sixth discs. So unless they've done something especially clever and unexpected, the four disc versions must have slightly different masters, if only to omit the menu item to that mode. I'm just wondering if there are any other differences (I doubt it).